I spent a couple hours this evening previewing Xara Extreme. Let me say that it lives up to what they say it does on the website, mostly what stands out is it’s speed of operation. In fact, the more I use it, the more I want to not use illustrator. Though illustrator is an excellent program, it’s grown slow to open and operate in recent years. Xara has the bitmap trace, all the tools I use so far and an interface that I really work well with. One thing I haven’t found yet is gradient mesh editing. Perhaps I will make it part of my workflow for a mere 79 bucks.

Last evening, sitting in Las Vegas airport, I was almost tempted into playing slots like the rest of the pinheads, but I decided to enjoy a game of classic Super Mario Bros, on my PC using an old emulator called Nester. It was awesome. I have never played every single level of that game, until now. With the help of that emulator and being able to save games during certain annoying parts, I accomplished all I really need to with Mario in about 45 minutes.